Thursday is almost like a national holiday for me.
After about eight months or so of waiting, though it feels like I’ve waited eight years for this, the college football season officially gets underway south of the border.
Okay, technically it started up last weekend when Hawaii played California in Australia.
Plus there was also the the Division 1-AA (I don’t care what they call it now, it’s still 1-AA to me) game between North Dakota State and Charleston Southern, which features the best name in all of sports in North Dakota State quarterback Easton Stick.
Those were just teasers though. The fun really gets started this weekend as 128 teams vie for one of four spots in the year-end playoff.
There’s times where I feel like I’m out on a deserted island when it comes to my college football fandom, especially after living out here in the West for almost three years now.
Naturally the Canadian Football League is huge around here, even if the Saskatchewan Roughriders are having a rough season.
Then you have the National Football League, which despite all of its issues remains the be all and end all when it comes to North American team sports.
When it comes to pure excitement, they don’t do it for me like college football does.
The best way I can describe it is if you look at a National Hockey League game in comparison to a junior or college game.
The top players are going to be at the highest level of course, but for the most part, the more out of control and crazy games happen when you go watch a Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League or Western Hockey League game.
That’s what watching college football on a weekly basis is like for me.
Sure the NFL may have more talking points, but I can name up to 10 games on any given week during the college football season that can blow the best pro contest out of the water.
So how exactly did a kid growing up in Northern Ontario end up becoming a fanatic for a sport that he often has to search for online streams of big games that aren’t on Canadian television?
Well you can thank the Cincinatti Bengals and a guy named Chris Rix for that.
For reasons that have yet to be fully explained other than that I have always been a sucker for bad teams, I decided to become a Bengals fan in 2003.
Right around that time was when the Bengals drafted University of Southern California quarterback Carson Palmer with the first pick in the NFL draft.
As a result, I decided to check out the Trojans a bit more, which turned out to be a ton of fun, as they won two national titles and almost a third in a row from 2003-05.
Yes I know they had to vacate the 2004 title and a bunch of wins due to NCAA violations, but I don’t care, that team was awesome.
Before that run was in full swing though, I had more of a passing interest in college football until a pair of games involving Florida State quarterback Chris Rix.
Rix, who never played in the pro ranks, prevailed in a back-and-forth 50-44 double-overtime battle against a North Carolina State team that featured future San Diego Chargers starting QB Phillip Rivers.
Then the next weekend, Rix threw a 52-yard touchdown pass in the final minute to help his team defeat their archrival Florida.
That was enough to get me hooked and I’ve enjoyed the roller coaster rides that Saturdays in the fall provide for me ever since that day.
Here’s to a great season of twist and turns. I can’t wait to see what happens.
